For nearly two thousand years, both believers and non-believers have grappled with the New Testament. What exactly does it say? Why do its authors claim divine status for Jesus? Do they mean to speak literally of the end of the world? These and other questions were posed even before the time all the 27 books of the New Testament were written. During the period when the great majority of Jesus’ followers were illiterate, teachers and new believers alike had to rely on oral tradition.